What Really Causes Disease?

I am posting this information here on the germ theory from, "The Untold Story of Milk" By Ron Schmid, ND, so that others may consider; is the germ theory, which we take on assumption as factual, incorrect? Or a gross distortion of reality?

---Do Germs really cause disease?

I ask this because, having read accounts of primitive cultures, their diet and superb (I repeat, superb!) state of health and their eventual deterioration after long-term consumption of 'civilized' food, as documented in the works of Price ["Nutrition and Physical Degneration"] and Steffanson ["Cancer: Disease of Civilization"], it becomes clear that their disease was not brought on by germs.

If the germ theory is false, then why is it upheld? --Is it because, under the guise of protecting us from the threat of invading-microbes Government (in conjunction with big-pharma) is able to take away our rights and freedoms, experiment on us with vaccines and still be looked upon as our saviour?

After all, if disease is not caused by an external barrage of microbes, but as the paper below asserts, is due to our Milieu Interieur (Internal Environment), then our health is our responsibility and not the Government/Big-Pharmas, their reason for unmerited power becomes nullified.

On a final note, ponder on this: "Pasteur's mechanistic understanding of disease took away the individual's power to prevent it, and placed the mandate to cure squarely in the hands of the medical professionals. In the years since, continually greater controll over the lives of individuals has also been the dominant theme of governments the world over. Professional medical associations have allied with the drug companies and with governments, contenting themselves with growing rich while ignoring the fundamental cause of disease."


Chapter 4: Microbes Versus Milieu: What Really Causes Disease?

Most people believe that acute disease are caused by infectious microbes--viruses, bacteria and parasites. The germ theory states that every infectious disease has a causative agent that attacks the individual and results in illness, with little consideration given to the reasons why some people are susceptible to attack while others are not.

During the last thirty years, an explosion of knowledge about the immune system has contributed to a growing understanding that a strong immune system can protect us against infectious disease. Still, the generally accepted view is that microbes are the cause of acute illness. ...

----------Claude Bernaard and The Milieu Interieur

What we now recognize as the immune system may be thought of as the milieu interieur, a phrase coined in the 1860s by the great French physiologist Claude Bernard. The milieu interieur refers to the internal environment the individual brings to the battleground for infectious disease --that which creates resistance, inner strength and for some, complete immunity.

The great debate in science and medicine during the latter half of the nineteenth century was about microbes versus milieu in etiology of infectious disease. At the centre stage stood Bernard and Louis Pasteur.

Scientists understood very little about the infectious diseases that caused most of the deaths during those years. By the 1880s, sophisticated microscopes and the bacteriological techniques developed by Robert Koch and his associates would allow discovery of the organisms associated with tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria, scarlet fever and a host of other diseases.

Those discoveries led to a growing acceptance of Pasteur's germ theory. But in the years prior to Koch's discovery of the tubercle bacillus in 1882, the ideas of Claude Bernard held sway.

Born in 1813, Bernard became one of the most respected and influential scientists of his time. A professor of physiology at the Sorbonne, he had his own laboratory at France's famous Museum of Natural History in the Jardin des Plantes.

He came to understand that the blood and lymph that bathe the cells of the body make up the interior environment, the milieu interieur. Upon the self-regulating ability of that environment to maintain constancy or equilibrium rested the body's ability to function.

A corollary that emerged was that the balanced equilibrium that resulted from a fully healthy body was not easily upset by organisms that caused disease in a less healthy body. Thus did bernard's work reinforce the ancient concept of empirical healers since Hippocrates, that the cause of all disease ultimately lay in the life and habits of the individual. Vis medicatrix naturae, "nature cure," is another corollarry--when the body is ailing, it will cure itself if we provide the proper conditions.

----------Louis Pasteur andd The Germ Theory

Bernard's contemporary Louis Pasteur was born in 1822. ... Pasteur was a chemist and bacteriologist, a prolific writer adept at self-promotion... Popular for his germ theory his early work involved fermentation and wine. ... But long before that, Pateur's discoveries met with widespread commercial success, for he worked primarily on probblems of immediate economic, industrial and medical application. ...

But it was with RObert Koch's brilliant series of discoveries involving the isolation of the organisms causing tuberculosis and cholera in the 1880s that Pasteur's germ theory gained broad acceptance with both medical professionals and the public.

The ascendance and century-long domination of the germ theory in modern medical thinking is primarily a reflection of the political and economic scene that has evolved. Pasteur's star began to rise when Emperor Napoleon III, an admirer of his work, created a laboratory of physiological science for him at the Sorbonne in 1867.

Pasteur's mechanistic understanding of disease took away the individual's power to prevent it, and placed the mandate to cure squarely in the hands of the medical professionals. In the years since, continually greater controll over the lives of individuals has also been the dominant theme of governments the world over. Professional medical associations have allied with the drug companies and with governments, contenting themselves with growing rich while ignoring the fundamental cause of disease. ...

That science and medicine went down the path of pasteur's germ theory was not inevitable. The germ theory led to the assumption that disease germs could be overwhelmed and eliminated only by drugs.

But ample evidence existed for Bernard's alternative theory of the milieu interieur, or internal terrain as the dominant element in determining the outcome of the battle between humans and pathogenic microbes. Bernard contributed mightily to the understanding of the workings of human physiology, elucidating the beginings of our understanding of the complex interaction between individuals and the environment that regulates every aspect of metabolism. The French government held Bernard in such high regard that they honored him with a public funeral in 1878--an honor denied to Pasteur upon his death seventeen years later.

Pasteur himself by one account declared on his deathbed, "Claude Bernard was right...the microbe is nothing, the terrain is everything."